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| Ladbroke profits up strongly on 'bookie-friendly' results | Ladbroke profits up strongly on 'bookie-friendly' results |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Ladbrokes has reported a £25.2m profit for the first six months of the year compared with last year's £51.4m loss. | |
| The bookmaker says this strong performance is in part due to "sporting gods" being on its side. | |
| It cites a run of "bookie friendly" results, like that of the European Championship, where England and Northern Ireland exited early. | |
| Ladbrokes, which plans to merge with rival Coral, says a run of "customer friendly" results will follow. | |
| It says it is in talks with potential buyers for around 400 stores it has to sell for the merger to go through. | It says it is in talks with potential buyers for around 400 stores it has to sell for the merger to go through. |
| The results show that customers are responding positively to the company's new strategy "at a time when the sporting gods have generally been on our side and we've enjoyed some helpful bookmaker friendly results", said chief executive, Jim Mullen. | |
| "History would strongly dictate that such a run of results in our favour would see customer staking suffer, but encouragingly these numbers firmly buck that trend and combine strong staking and a good margin." | |
| "However, 130 years of experience in sports betting has shown us that we will endure a run of customer friendly results and margins will normalise," he added. | |
| A short while ago Ladbrokes' shares were up 5%. |